Bones Omnibus (94 page)

A low rumble passed through the throng. Some preferred to think of Bones as one of the white dogs of Tawiskaron, capable of impossible feats. How else could he have killed and maimed so many of them already? But others were terrified, recognizing the shepherd as indicative of the unknown terrors they would face in the coming world. If they could be undone by a single dog, what chance did they have against a pack?

“So, we will train with him,” Orenda announced. “You will know the experience of facing a creature like this, one who doesn’t at all feel threatened by the presence of man like the wolf or bear.”

In the stands, Jess was seated alongside Patrick and the other so-called newcomers, humans who had grown up in the outside world but were now part of the tribe in hopes of strengthening the gene pool. As Patrick had suggested, the ways they had come to the sasquatches were all over the map. All had been taken against their will, most had watched their comrades be slaughtered for refusing to join, and, to a person, they’d become convinced as to the sanctity of their mission.

“I was a cardiologist,” one of the men, a thirty-something who introduced himself as Ramin, told Jess. “My life was an endless stretch of surgical suites interspersed with boring dates, meaningless sex, girlfriends frustrated that I was permanently on call, breakups by text, the occasional golf game, the out-of-town conference, then more chest cracking and heart massage. I didn’t choose anything, as my life was laid out, hour by hour, by circumstance. But when my car broke down out on the 86 coming back from Buffalo and I met these fine people, it was as if I was accessing part of my mind I didn’t even know had lain dormant for so long. My compatriots, the three other doctors driving back with me, understandably wanted no part of it and paid for their choices with their lives. But I’ve never felt more alive. I’m a part of something important. I never had time for kids before, but now I’m a father of two, with four more on the way. Sure, I’m to die next year, but I’ll die having
done
something. Something that
mattered
. Not just transplant the hearts of unlucky young motorcycle drivers into the chest cavities of rich old fucks after a lifetime of red meat.”

Jess understood completely. As Ramin, one of the men who had decided to eschew all semblances of the outside world and go about naked, spoke, Jess found herself inexplicably aroused. She was enjoying this very experience herself and was amazed to find someone else who understood precisely how incredible it was. The incredible infusion of self-worth. The intense feeling of responsibility. The
perspective
.

How do you tell somebody that things you believed your whole life to be of the utmost importance were suddenly without meaning? Unless, of course, they’d gone through the same thing.

But Ramin sensed her ardor and smiled sheepishly.

“Any other time, I would absolutely couple with you,” he said. “You are young and astoundingly gorgeous, with perfect hair and breasts. But I must preserve myself, just as you have to. We cannot confuse paternity. Your womb has a reserved sign!”

He said this last thing as a joke, but Jess knew he was right. She almost commented on the absurdity of his rejection, given that he was sitting there with an impossible-to-miss erection, but refrained.

The women, on the other hand, seemed to take an altogether different view. As there was no question of pregnancy, Jess realized early on that casual coupling amongst the female newcomers was seen as a positive, something that drew them together in shouldering the attendant burdens of their new lives. Jess had never had any kind of homosexual feeling, much less experience, but found herself unwilling to rule it out as a future possibility.

As she listened to Orenda speak in the arena, her eyes drifted to a self-proclaimed hippie chick named Faith from San Diego who’d actually followed rumors all the way across the country to the tribe. She showed up one day dehydrated and half-starved, but claiming to have been guided to their doorstep by the stars. After spending a few days meditating with Orenda, she was accepted. She was so well-liked that her inability to conceive after five months of trying with various males didn’t result in a death sentence. She even offered to take her own life to reduce the number of mouths to be fed, but after this was unanimously voted down, she vowed to redouble her efforts, beginning that night with a marathon of partners, even though she knew she wasn’t ovulating at the time.

“It just felt like the right thing to do,” she’d explained to Jess when they met.

Jess wondered if she’d ever get to the mental space where a gang bang “just felt like the right thing to do,” only to banish the thought for fear of the answer.

“Did that dog really kill all those sasquatches by the fire tower?” Patrick, beside her on the bench, whispered.

“Yeah,” Jess nodded. “It was like one of those karate movies where the hero just goes down the line, knocking everyone out. Except the dog killed them all.”

“That’s fucked up,” Patrick said. “As if they didn’t have a population problem as it was.”

“Well, Orenda seems to think it was some kind of blessing, right?” Jess replied, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Like he’s some of god-dog sent to teach them how to fight?”

“I guess we’ll see,” Patrick sighed. “But what does it say about her visions if all this planning and procreating will be undone by the first pack of feral dogs that makes it this far into the wilderness?”

Jess was about to respond when four sasquatches rose from their seats near the edge of the arena and climbed down next to Orenda. She nodded to them, and they bowed reverentially to her. They moved to the opposite side of the pit, where several tribesmen and women offered them various weapons to choose from. One of the sasquatches took a club, another a spear. The third took two long knives, with the fourth selecting a primitive sort of bolo.

Once each had nodded in satisfaction at their chosen weapons to Orenda, she stepped out of the pit and indicated for Bones to be uncaged.

The shepherd was still a little woozy, but had watched the sasquatches enter the ring and take up their arms. They had formed a semicircle around the dog and waited for it to attack. A sasquatch turned a gear that, in turn, wound up a length of hemp rope that ran to the ceiling of the arena, through a pulley, and down to a hook on the top of Bones’s cage. Before it had risen six feet, the sasquatches had already closed on the dog.

But Bones appeared nonplussed. Sure, four massive, hairy beasts, two carrying weapons meant to tear his flesh and the other pair with ones to bash him into a pulp, would have made for an intimidating sight to most. But Bones wasn’t most. He saw it for the lazy threat that it was and waited. There was no malice in these monsters, only fear and reluctance.

When the sasquatch with the bolo lowered the heavy stone balls to spin them in a deadly circle, Bones leaped for its leg, biting into its kneecap with such force that the kneecap separated from the tendon, sending the monster to the ground. The sasquatch with the club wheeled around to bring its cudgel down on Bones’s head, only to accidentally strike its comrade on the hip.

Now the melee began in earnest.

As the sasquatch with the spear tried to parry with Bones, keeping him at a distance with the spear’s handle, the dog simply grabbed it in his jaws and yanked it away. Weaponless, the sasquatch broke and ran for the edge of the arena. The shepherd gave chase and caught the back of its thigh in his jaws. Tearing away a layer of hair, skin, and meat, Bones dropped to the ground, waited for the injured sasquatch to tumble backward, then bit down on its windpipe, ripping apart its neck as he bolted away.

One down.

The sasquatch with the club ran at the shepherd, club held aloft in its right hand. As it brought it down, aiming for Bones’s back, the dog dodged the blow and grabbed the sasquatch’s wrist in his mouth. As Bones held on, blood streaming from puncture wounds on both sides of the sasquatch’s arm, the club dropped to the ground. The man-beast leaned down to pick it up in its left hand, giving Bones the opening he craved. Dropping the arm, he jumped at the sasquatch’s head and tore off its nose, half its cheek, its lips, and much of the flesh on its chin. As blood showered from this ruin of a face, the shepherd snapped at its neck a couple of times before hitting pay dirt. When he punctured the sasquatch’s carotid artery, Bones’s face was doused in blood from the wound.

As the monster hit the ground, soon to bleed out, the shepherd shook his head to clear the blood from his eyes, and took a few steps back.

The sasquatch with the knives and the injured one with the bolos assessed the situation with greater care. They wisely decided to combine their efforts, the knife-sasquatch indicating for the bolo-bearing one to swing his weapon to draw the dog’s attention. When the inevitable attack came, he was to drop his bolo, and the one with blades would swoop in and stab the animal while it was momentarily distracted, claiming victory in the process.

How it worked out in reality was slightly different. Bones was indeed lured by the swinging bolos, but the sasquatch with the knives made a move too soon, anticipating the dropping of the weapon and raising his twin sabers to strike.

Leaving his midsection tantalizingly unprotected.

The shepherd leaped for his exposed stomach and tore out his intestines as the now-unarmed sasquatch watched in horror. As the disemboweled creature tried in vain to gather itself back up, Bones turned to the one cursing its belief in the bolo and attacked its throat with such vengeance that death was caused by a broken neck instead of blood loss.

The dog then turned and tore the eyes out of the entrail-less sasquatch, hastening his death.

The assemblage grew so quiet that the shepherd’s shuffling footfalls in the sandy pit echoed with crystal clarity around the arena. Then Orenda got to her feet, hands raised to calm her kinsmen’s fears.

“If this does not teach you the importance of our preparations, then I don’t know what…”

Her words were cut off by a hundred pounds of fur-covered fury leaping from the ringed pit to the one moving person in his vicinity. Bones didn’t even have to open his jaws as the impact of his strike threw Orenda backward against one of the stone benches, shattering her skull, snapping her spine, and breaking her back. Her death was instantaneous.

Blind panic ensued.

Rather than fight the enraged canine, the spectators agreed as one to evacuate and regroup elsewhere. There were four passages through which to leave, and they were soon flooded by humans and sasquatches alike, fighting to get out. A couple of punches were thrown, but the much larger sasquatches easily won out and were first into the tunnels.

Jess stared at the lifeless form of Orenda, heartbroken at what she imagined were all the lessons the old woman would now be unable to impart to her or those who might care for and raise her baby in the future.

“If this is the best they can do, these guys are
fucked
,” Patrick whispered, coming up behind her, his arm still in its sling.

“Shut up, Patrick,” Jess snarled back. “You heard her yourself. It’s some kind of dog-spirit.”

Patrick did as commanded, but not for the reason Jess intended. Instead, he stared at the one-time first year law associate with surprise, a silly grin spreading across his face.

“What?” she asked.

“I’m here for the sex, but you’re already a true believer. Man, Jess, I never pegged you as the susceptible type.”

“Fuck you, Patrick,” Jess shot back, elbowing him in the chest.

Bones galloped around the benches, nipping at the retreating tribal members, but doing little damage. They were terrified of him, and this suddenly put him in an impish mood. He leaped and pranced, woofed and licked, but no one would take him up on his jovial offer to play.

Soon, the arena was empty and the shepherd alone.

He hopped back into the pit, sniffed around the corpses of the dead sasquatches, peed on one of them (spear-sasquatch), and then jumped out to investigate the body of the old woman. Orenda’s mouth was barely open, as if in a tiny gasp. Her eyelids were half down, however, suggesting someone ready to sleep.

Bones sniffed around her clothes and found a small store of black walnuts and hickory nuts in a pouch on her belt. He tore this open with a claw and quickly ate them. He sniffed around a moment longer, became bored, and made for the exit.

The shepherd ambled down the tunnel unchallenged. He caught the scents of a few retreating humans and sasquatches, but they were giving him a wide berth. He picked up traces of Jess, but nothing strong enough to provide direction.

But suddenly this changed.

Directly ahead of him, he caught the young woman’s scent, but also that of one of the sasquatches. Unlike the others, it betrayed no feelings of fear and wasn’t running away. Bones advanced cautiously, the cool night air now reaching his nose as well, so close was he to one of the cave mouths.

He turned a last corner and found his path blocked by a large sasquatch, Tadodaho. In one hand, it held a weighted net. In the other, a crude pitchfork.

“Come, Tawiskaron,” Tadodaho bellowed. “Your time here is finished. Time to pass back into the spirit world.”

Tadodaho barely raised the net, but it was enough to elevate the hair on Bones’s back. He lowered his head, growled, and bared his teeth. The shepherd was fatigued, the time between the fight and this current encounter having slowed his heart rate, allowing his body to tire. with Tadodaho slowing his heart rate and allowing his body to tire, but he had about one more fight in him.

“Perhaps you want me to come to you? Is this
my
lesson? I accept your challenge. Now do me the honor you accorded my tribesmen!”

Tadodaho feinted with the pitchfork. Bones took the bait and launched himself at the sasquatch’s arm. But the monster quickly pivoted on his left heel, allowed the shepherd to bite down on the pitchfork handle, then swung the net around, delivering glancing blows to the dog’s head, back, and hindquarters with the evenly spaced weights.